Health Sciences Calendar
2005 - 2006

3.1.3 History

The Faculty of Medicine was established as the first faculty of McGill University in 1829. It dates its origin to 1823 when four staff members of the recently opened Montreal General Hospital founded the Montreal Medical Institution in order to offer lectures to students of medicine. In 1833, four years after the Institution became the Faculty of Medicine, William Leslie Logie was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine and Surgery and became the first McGill, and the first Canadian medical, graduate. In 1862 the degree was changed to its present designation, Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery (M.D.,C.M.) and in 1872 it was conferred upon the Faculty's most illustrious graduate, William Osler. Osler served on the faculty from 1874 to 1884 before going on to the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, and Oxford University. He was instrumental in developing the Health Sciences Library, which had its origin in the Montreal Medical Institution and which now contains over 285,000 volumes and 4,500 periodicals, and left to it his extensive collection of books devoted to the history of medicine.

The land occupied by the University, deeded to it by James McGill, lies in the heart of Montreal on the southern slope of Mount Royal. The medical faculty offices are located in the McIntyre Medical Sciences Building which lies higher on the flank of the mountain on Promenade Sir-William-Osler at Pine Avenue. The Health Sciences Library, the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, and a number of the departments of the Faculty are located in this building. The Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building, the Montreal Neurological Institute and hospital of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), founded in 1887, are situated a half mile east of the McIntyre Building while the Montreal General Hospital of the MUHC, relocated in 1955 from its original site south of the University, lies a half mile to the west. The Montreal Children's Hospital of the MUHC, the Sir Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hospital, St.Mary's Hospital and the Douglas Hospital are also teaching/affiliated institutions. In addition, there are nine centres and units specializing in A.I.D.S.; artificial cells and organs, cancer research; host resistance; human genetics; medical education; non-linear dynamics; nutrition and food science; aerospace medical research; medical physics; age and aging; and in biomedical ethics.